Third Biennial Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean.

Trade, Travel and Transmission in the Medieval Mediterranean 
Third Biennial Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean

Churchill College, University of Cambridge (UK), 8-10 July 2013.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Prof. David Abulafia (University of Cambridge) and Prof. Carole Hillenbrand (University of Edinburgh)

* Call for Papers *

Abstract deadline: 1^st December 2012

The Society for the Medieval Mediterranean is proud to announce our forthcoming third biennial conference, with the theme of ‘Trade, Travel and Transmission’. This three-day inter-disciplinary conference will bring scholars together to explore the interaction of the various peoples, societies, faiths and cultures of the medieval Mediterranean, a region which had been commonly represented as divided by significant religious and cultural differences. The objective of the conference is to highlight the extent to which the medieval Mediterranean was not just an area of conflict but also a highly permeable frontier across which people, goods and ideas crossed and influenced neighbouring cultures and societies. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers in the fields of archaeology, art and architecture, codicology, ethnography, history (including the histories of science, medicine and cartography), languages, literature, music, philosophy and religion. Submission on the following topics would be particularly welcome:

• Activities of missionary orders
• Artistic contacts and exchanges
• Byzantine and Muslim navies
• Captives and slaves
• Cargoes, galleys and warships
• Costume and vestments
• Diplomacy
• Judaism and Jewish Mediterranean History
• Literary contacts and exchanges
• Material Culture
• Minority Populations in the Christian and Islamic Worlds.
• Mirrors for Princes
• Music, sacred and secular
• Port towns/city states
• Relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims.
• Religious practices: saints, cults and heretics
• Scientific exchange, including astronomy, medicine and mathematics
• Seafaring, seamanship and shipbuilding
• Sufis & Sufi Orders in North Africa and the Levant
• Sultans, kings and other rulers
• Trade and Pilgrimage
• Travel writing
• Warfare: mercenaries and crusaders

Please send abstracts of no longer than 250 words, together with a short CV (max. 2 sides of A4) to Dr Rebecca Bridgman (University of Cambridge, Vice-President of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean) by e-mail.

Source: COMSt